"What we're finally beginning to see in finance [departments] is payroll is increasing, which means they have more people."

CFOs need to see the case for additional workers translated into an organization's profits and losses, Good adds. A spike in accounts receivable would indicate to a CFO that the finance department needs additional staff.

"They want to see it on paper translated into dollars and cents."

With a sales staff at capacity, adding employees at tech vendor is proving critical to meeting the company's fiscal goal of increasing profitability each year, according to CFO Ron Gill. The company "saw a big uptick in demand" for its products, which include Web-based ERP and CRM systems, in the late second half of last year, Gill said. He attributed this spike to a better economy, a shift to ERP over the Web and analysts claims that companies were looking to replace IT systems.

"As a company we are increasing headcount pretty dramatically," he says. "Those heads are primarily in sales and engineering. On the finance, we're pretty right sized."